BCB After Dark: I’ll ask management

Welcome back to BCB After Dark: the swingin’ spot for night owls, early-risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. I’m so happy that you’ve stopped by tonight, because misery loves company. There’s no cover charge tonight. Please come on in and take a seat. Forget about your misery for a while. Please bring your own beverage.

BCB After Dark is the place for you to talk baseball, music, movies, or anything else you need to get off your chest, as long as it is within the rules of the site. The late-nighters are encouraged to get the party started, but everyone else is invited to join in as you wake up the next morning and into the afternoon. BCB After Dark is the place for you to talk baseball, music, movies, or anything else you need to get off your chest, as long as it is within the rules of the site. The late-nighters are encouraged to get the party started, but everyone else is invited to join in as you wake up the next morning and into the afternoon.

The Cubs lost their eighth-straight game, 12-5 to the Padres. This one really stung since they led 5-0 at one point. All I can say is that these results are simply unacceptable.

Last night I asked you what American League team do you cheer for, if any. We really got a terrific variety of answers and every single AL team got at least one vote. But in first place with a whopping 13 percent of the vote was the Minnesota Twins. They’ve got a fun team this year, that’s for sure. In second place was the Tampa Bay Rays with 12 percent and the Boston Red Sox got 11 percent. The White Sox were in fourth with ten percent, which just goes to show how spread out the voting was.

Here’s the part where we have some music to take our mind off our troubles. I don’t do a movie essay on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, but I did reveal last night that the next film I plan to write on is the 1986 Bertrand Tavernier-directed film ‘Round Midnight. But you can skip the music if you want.

In the film ‘Round Midnight, lead actor and jazz legend Dexter Gordon plays a troubled jazz legend named Dale Turner. While the script based the character of Dale on pianist Bud Powell, Gordon took a lot of his performance from his idol, tenor saxophonist Lester Young,

So here’s a Warner Brothers short film from 1944 that features Young and a lot of other great jazz artists from that year. You can watch the credits at the beginning of the film easier than I can list them here. So here’s Lester Young in Jammin’ The Blues.

Welcome back to everyone who skips the jazz.

The Cubs lost their eighth-straight game tonight and as I wrote above, this is really unacceptable. I don’t think anyone really thought the Cubs were a contender coming into this season, but to have the 26th-best record in MLB at this point of the year is a team playing well below expectations.

Normally when a team plays this poorly, the manager is the first one to take the blame. (After they’re fired, some prominent baseball writer will always defend the fired manager by writing “He wasn’t the one giving up all those home runs and striking out all the time.”) Now to be sure, a lot of the blame for the Cubs’ crappy season belongs on the front office and the players themselves. But how much of it is manager David Ross’ fault?

Ross’ job doesn’t seem to be in danger despite the team’s putrid play. But should it be? Tonight I’m going to ask you to give David Ross a grade. If you give him an A or a B, you still have faith that he’s the guy to lead the team back to contention. Not this year, of course, but sometime in the future.

If you give Ross a D, then you think the team has got to start showing some improvement by the end of the year or he should be gone. If you give him an F, then you think he should probably be fired in the next few weeks if not sooner.

A C is pretty much in the middle. You don’t think this is Ross’ fault, but you think he could be handling this better.

So what grade to you give David Ross?

Thank you so much for stopping by. It’s never our intention to bring anyone down, so I hope that we’ve cheered you up a little. Please get home safely. We’ll call you a ride if you need one. Tip your waitstaff. And join us again tomorrow night for another edition of BCB After Dark.